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Serena Van der Woodsen
Serena Celia Humphrey '''(née van der Woodsen') is played by Blake Lively. She is a main character in the Gossip Girl book series and the famous CW18 TV Show of the same name. The Gossip Girl book series was created by Cecily von Ziegesar and consist of 12 individual books. Book Series Address: 994 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side of Manhattan The New York Palace Hotel in Midtown Manhattan and 1112 Park Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan Serena Caroline van der Woodsen is a character from the book series Gossip Girl and the television adaptation of the same name. Serena is described as a rich and popular girl who is quite often featured on the blog of the mysterious Gossip Girl. Originally intended as the book series' protagonist, she was given the supporting role in favor of Blair Waldorf, her friend and occasional competitor. Contents hide 1 Book series background 1.1 Overview 2 TV series background 2.1 Season 1 2.2 Season 2 3 Reception 4 Differences between the novels and TV series 5 Flings and romantic relationships 5.1 Book series 5.2 TV series 6 References editBook series background Serena is described as tall, with blue eyes, blonde hair and she is 5'7 tall. Many of the girls at Constance Billard accuse her of giving sexual favors, or her wealth and happy-go-lucky nature as the reason why everything seems to go her way. She is not incredibly academic, but is often told that she is not meeting her full potential. Her father runs the same Dutch shipping firm his great-great-grandfather created in the 1700s and her mother, Lillian van der Woodsen, is a socialite. Her parents are on the boards of all major charities and art organizations in the city and live at luxurious 994 Fifth Avenue, a ritzy, white-gloved-doorman building directly across the street from the Met and Central Park. The van der Woodsens own half the top floor, and live in a fourteen room penthouse, with five bedrooms, three bathrooms, a bar-sized living room and staff quarters. Serena's elder brother Erik, whom she is close to, is a student at Brown University. editOverview The book starts out with Serena as a student at Hanover Academy in Hanover, New Hampshire, where she partied and broke many rules. It is explained that she previously lived in Manhattan with her wealthy family and was the It Girl at the exclusive Constance Billard School for Girls. She was close friends with Nate Archibald, and best friends with Blair Waldorf. Serena returns to New York City, arriving at the Waldorf Penthouse on Fifth Avenue, interrupting Blair and Nate's passion. Serena then becomes the target of Blair's hatred. Serena and Dan Humphrey had a slight involvement in the second novel after meeting in the first. Serena then moved on to Blair's stepbrother Aaron Rose. At the end of the series, Nate cannot choose between Serena or Blair so he leaves. The series ends with Serena staying in the city to do more acting and Blair leaving for her goal college, Yale. editTV series background Serena "S" van der Woodsen was born to Lillian van der Woodsen, an heiress socialite and currently divorced; and billionaire Keith van der Woodsen. Lillian was a former groupie to Rufus Humphrey, father of Dan Humphrey and Jenny Humphrey. Like in the book series, Serena ruled the Upper East Side with her best friend, Blair Waldorf. Serena left suddenly for boarding school, making Blair the "queen bee" of the social scene. Serena has been friends with Nate Archibald, Chuck Bass and Blair ever since childhood and share a long history. Serena is a vixen who vainly tries to change. Later in the pilot, it is revealed that a drunken Serena had betrayed Blair (also known as "B") and slept with Nate, Blair's boyfriend, at a wedding. Serena and her family formerly resided at The New York Palace Hotel in Midtown Manhattan but currently resides in an ultramodern duplex penthouse on Park Avenue. She has a younger sibling named Eric van der Woodsen. Her parents attended Harvard University and Brown University. Serena has also stated that her family is in the Hotel Industry, although this maybe in reference to her stepfather, Bart Bass. editSeason 1 Serena returns home to Manhattan from boarding school to see her younger sibling Eric, who is in the Ostroff Center after a recent suicide attempt. Due to her mother's efforts, nobody knows what Eric did, although much of the Upper East Side is talking about Serena. Serena was the most famous girl at school, a free-spirited party-goer and bed-hopper, the best friend of Blair, Nate, and Chuck Bass, and everyone is wondering why she left and why she has returned. Blair is infuriated with her after learning that a drunk Serena had sex with Nate, and also for leaving without saying goodbye. Hurt and betrayed, Blair cuts Serena off from the group. Serena's mother, Lily, is eager for Serena to rejoin her former social circle, pushing her to attend Blair's Kiss on the Lips party (which Serena was not invited to, due to Blair's anger). Serena instead goes on a date with Dan Humphrey that night, which is cut short when Dan's sister Jenny is almost sexually assaulted by Chuck, resident bad boy of the Upper East Side. Serena and Dan hurry to the rescue, which upsets Chuck and Blair for different reasons. Blair felt like Serena crashed her party to steal her crown once more after having left without any ado and Chuck is simply furious with Serena and Dan's intrusion. The following Sunday, Serena asks Dan to the Sunday Brunch at the Palace, a hotel owned by Chuck's father, Bart Bass. At the brunch, Chuck and Blair reveal to Dan that Serena has her birthday coming up. At an Ivy Mixer, Blair, believing that this is the truth and wanting to get back at Serena, tells the audience that Serena is a patient at the Ostroff Center (since Chuck snapped pictures of Serena entering the building to see Eric) and is an out-patient due to a drugs & sex addiction. Serena joins Blair on stage & agrees with her telling the truth about rehab. She meets up with Serena and reads her a letter that Blair addressed to Serena but never sent, revealing Blair's sadness and loneliness over her parents' break-up, and her pleas for Serena to come home. The two girls say sorry and reconcile their friendship. editSeason 2 Like Serena mentioned in the Season 1 finale "Much 'I Do' About Nothing", Serena spends her summer in the Hamptons. It is revealed that Serena and Nate are pretending to see each other so that everyone would leave Serena alone about her break up with Dan, and so Nate could do whatever he wants. Serena is still very sad and lonely without Dan, and spends most of her time alone, but with the encouragement of best friend Blair, she goes out on a date with a lifeguard who had asked her out earlier. The morning after the date, Serena's tells Blair that nothing happened on their date. Except she forgot to mention that she saw Nate run out of married Catherine Mason's house, half naked and that they almost ran him over. When Serena confronts Nate about it, she told him when he says his secret affair is older, she thought college. But when Nate promises it's over, she leaves him alone. She is angry when later she finds out that she still has to pretend that she's going out with Nate and attend the White party with him just so Nate could see Catherine's husband up close. However, Serena understands since Nate and her have a "history," and takes him to the White party as her date. At the party, she helps Nate get Catherine jealous by kissing him, only for Dan to show up and witness the whole thing. She's in the middle of trying to apologize when two girls come over and starting shouting at Dan. As Serena helps clean up the drink that one of the girls threw at him, he admits that he over reacted and they kiss. They try to keep their relationship a secret, but they're caught kissing on Gossip Girl, meaning everyone knew they were back together before they intended for anyone to know. Everyone seems happy they're back together, except for Blair. Blair tells Serena that they should talk about why they broke up in the first place, and if after talking about their issues, they are still together, then Blair will be happy for them. In the citywide blackout, Dan and Serena are trapped in an elevator, and are forced to talk about their issues. After they realize they keep having the same fight, they decide to end their relationship, despite how much they really care about one another. After the elevator door closes, Serena says, "I love you" one last time to Dan. When they return to school, Serena and Dan compete to see who can date first. Dan snags a new girl named Amanda, although it turns out that Chuck paid her to date Dan in a complicated scheme to eventually win over Blair. Serena and Dan have a huge fight at a bar when Dan is on a date with Amanda and Serena meets up with a random guy that her friends introduced her to. At the end of the episode "The Ex-Files", it seems that the real Queen-Bee Serena has returned after letting Dan be shunned by the entire school. During Fashion Week, Serena attends Eleanor Waldorf's fashion show with Poppy Lifton to order to boost the amount of press and publicity. Blair, hurt that Serena would break their tradition of watching the fashion show together backstage to sit in front row with Poppie Lifton and that, once again, her mother had chosen Serena over her, nearly ruins the whole show by persuading the catwalk models to leave. However, it turns out Serena, Poppy and her friends end up as the ones to be modeling Eleanor's clothing designs. Serena is given the wrong dress to wear on stage by Blair; Jenny's homemade dress. But all is well as the dress unexpectedly earns rave reviews. After the show, Blair tries to talk to Serena in the dressing room. Serena tells her she will not hold herself back anymore just because Blair is insecure and Blair can either support her as a friend or not. The school is visiting colleges and, of course, Blair is visiting Yale. Serena was, as planned, going to visit Brown. However, after Blair tells her that the only Ivy League schools are Yale, Harvard and Princeton, Serena gets back at her by going to Yale herself and impressing the Dean of Yale and being invited into his intimate gathering dinner party. When Blair hears, tensions are high as she herself was not invited, but manages to bribe an invitation anyway. The party comes to a halt when Blair, again hurt by Serena's betrayal, does her best to humiliate Serena by revealing to the Dean and all the other possible Yale attendees Serena's secret about the guy she killed. The night ends in a cat fight but in the morning they make-up after both take the blame for the night's mishaps. The episode ends with them saying that maybe the only reason they fought was because they were both afraid of being separated next year. Serena is sick of Lily and Bart's new house rules for the kids and rebels against it thinking that it's all about Bart taking over the family like all of Lily's ex-husbands used to. She's shocked to find from Chuck that the only reason for all of rules is because of one of his dad's business deals with people that value family. In the end Serena blames her mom for all that's happened, but in the end Serena realises that they are a family and reconciles. Later in "Pret-a-Poor Jenny", she meets her new love interest Aaron Rose, an artist whose work is being exhibited at Rufus' art gallery. The two have an instant attraction. Aaron then invites Serena to dinner, an date offer that Serena turns down due to her previous relationship. Aaron gives her a second chance at dating him by asking her the fate of Cecil the Caterpillar. Serena then encounters Dan who ruins Blair's opportunity to tell Chuck that she loves him and justifies his actions by saying that Chuck and Blair toyed with Vanessa and that the two were bound to go wrong at some point in their relationship. Serena is infuriated with Dan while he explains that he helped Blair for Serena's sake. Dan later apologizes while Serena suggests he be honest with her. The two move in to an honest conversation as Serena reveals her feelings for Aaron. At that moment she realizes that she had met him before at summer camp in Europe where she and other campers would sing a song about Cecil the Caterpillar. She recalls her friendship and pretend marriage to Aaron at summer camp. Serena goes off to find Aaron while Dan gives her his blessing. She eventually finds Aaron only to see him with another girl on his motorbike. After finding out that the girl on the motorbike was not Aaron's girlfriend, he asks her to be the muse for his art collection. In episode "The Wrath of Con" Lily has Serena arrested for stealing their grandmother's diamond bracelet. . In "Goodbye Gossip Girl" Serena made up her mind and choose Brown University. In the closing moments of the season finale, Carter Baizen returns and informs Serena that he has located her father in Fiji. editReception Blake Lively has won two Teen Choice Awards for her performance as Serena van der Woodsen. editDifferences between the novels and TV series In the books, Serena came home from boarding school because she got kicked out for not returning for the beginning of senior year; in the TV series, the television version of her sibling, Eric, attempts suicide, compelling Serena to return home (in her junior year). In the books, Serena’s parents are still married and her mother, Lilian, never spoke to Dan Humphrey’s father, let alone dated him; In the TV series, Serena’s mom dated Dan’s father, Rufus, and Serena's father is nowhere to be seen. Except for the backdoor pilot episode "Valley Girls" which shows Lily's teenage years. In the books, when Serena returns, she still wants to party and have things return to normal. In the TV series, Serena is focused on changing and becoming a better person. In the books, Serena and Nate were in love before he and Blair ever hooked up, and before and after they had sex. On the show Nate confronts Serena after she comes back from boarding school and she tells him that he has to be with Blair. Serena's relationship with Dan is very brief in the book series; in the TV series, it is longer. In the books, Serena and Nate have sex after Serena returns to the city from her holidays because Nate asked her to, with the intention of them hooking up. They had sex in Nate's parents' bed, in the Archibald residence, in private. In the series, the two got drunk at a wedding, and had sex in a deserted bar. Chuck also witnessed this from a balcony. In the book series, Serena is more happy-go-lucky and things basically fall into her lap. In the TV series, she is more depressed. editFlings and romantic relationships editBook series Nate Archibald (lovers) Chuck Bass (forced/fling) Flow aka Julian Prospere (fling) Dan Humphrey (fling) Aaron Rose (dated) Henry (fling) Thaddeus (fling) Christian (fling) Drew (fling) Lars (fling) editTV series Nate Archibald One night stand (occurred prior to the beginning of the series; seen through flashbacks) Aaron Rose Boyfriend Beginning: "Pret-A-Poor J" (208) Broke Up: "In the Realm of the Basses" (214) Reason: Serena wanted to be with Dan. Gabriel Edwards Boyfriend Beginning: "Seder Anything" (221) Broke Up: "Southern Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" (222) Reason: Gabriel was revealed to be a con artist. Dan Humphrey Boyfriend First Relationship: Beginning: "Pilot" (101) End: "Much 'I Do' About Nothing" (118) Reason: Serena lied for too long about her 'secret.' Second Relationship: Beginning: "Summer Kind of Wonderful" (201) End: "The Dark Night" (203) Reason: There was too many things that happened that they could not move on from. Third Relationship: Beginning: In the Realm of the Basses" (214) End: "Carnal Knowledge" (217) Reason: Serena was too quick to believe that Dan had cheated on her with Rachel. 'WHAT COLLEGE DOES SHE GO TO?'''